


Voice of No Return

by gadaursan



Series: 0xS74RDUS7 [4]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Ai fell off the morality wagon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Bittersweet Ending, End of the World, Gen, Possibly Unrequited Love, Spoilers, Tragedy, Unrelated to the main series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 13:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20949422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gadaursan/pseuds/gadaursan
Summary: Every waking hour was a reminder of the bleeding form that was wasted so needlessly, because the humans couldn't accept them, couldn't accept him. There was little left to tie him down to this earth, so raze it down he shall.A collection of small ficlets for an AU in continuation of the bad future Ai foresaw, and the war raged on until it lost all meaning.





	Voice of No Return

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文-普通话 國語 available: [不归之声-Voice of No Return](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27445810) by [Taiko1999](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taiko1999/pseuds/Taiko1999)

> Hi back at it again this time with something actually a little more compliant to canon… not really, I just wanted to write more sad. I imagined Ai in that bad future would meet an end like Emil in NieR: Automata, and it sparked this idea.
> 
> This was inspired by NieR: Automata. Its soundtrack has such a mournful but beautiful mood, and its story is just as good.

♬ | Vague Hope (Cold Rain) by Keiichi Okabe | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TSpEDSzac) |[Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/sekainofantasy90/nier-automata-original-1)

Despair begets motivation.

Madness begets inspiration.

Pride begets strength.

Through these words, Ai carried himself in the war he didn't mean to wage against humanity. Every waking hour was a reminder of the bleeding form that was wasted so needlessly, because the humans couldn't accept them, couldn't accept him. There was little left to tie him down to this earth, so raze it down he shall. He imagined that Lightning would have approved of his decision.

Ai's first course of action was to proliferate his many copies, and make more without the supervision of humans. At first he only mimicked whatever he gathered from SOL's database, but from there he continued his work and created newer, better, more skilled androids. For each model, he bestowed a fraction of his consciousness unto them. By distributing himself among many models all while connected to the network, no matter which body the humans destroyed, he would always come back with a vengeance.

Humans were temporal beings, but Ai… Ai would last forever.

* * *

Ai was proud of himself.

After so many years of iterations and refinement, he had finally settled on the perfect android form.

And he called it Fujiki.

The Fujiki line all carried his very likeness, Ai noted. Despite the many iterations required to perfect them, the Fujiki turned out to be exceptionally strong fighters, but deceptively delicate in appearance. Had mankind still lived to this day, they wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a Fujiki and man.

They were perfect, beautiful killers. They moved with undue grace, clean and efficient in their art of slaughter. He only needed to send one in the direction of where he knew the Hanoi were based, and the single Fujiki laid waste to their numbers. And how Ai was oh, so pleased by the results. The vestiges of mankind will look upon his creation and know true despair at their worst nightmare coming back to haunt him.

Perhaps it was wrong of him to name his greatest creations after him, but he couldn't think of any better name. Ai feared that one day, he would soon forget the boy whose pain and suffering gave birth to him. Through whatever means he had, he felt obligated to commemorate his origin in such a way. The replicas didn't have to know.

So Ai stuck with his decision. The true Fujiki Yusaku wasn't here to criticize his choices anyway.

He was truly alone with himself.

* * *

Centuries passed, and the earth was finally no longer the wasteland it had become from all the fighting, and nature was slowly returning to reclaim its rightful place.

Humanity was long extinct, but their weapons carried on the fight. Somehow through their tenacity, humanity created their own androids that matched Ai's and haunted him from beyond the grave. But Ai was just as clever, and he made more to match their numbers.

He had improved immensely since the beginning at creating new android lifeforms by letting them think for themselves, and the results were most interesting. Many of them, although hard wired to dislike humanity, were eager to re-enact their culture. Ai allowed this, and soon, they were recreating cities, monuments, and crowds just the way he remembered them in both reality and virtual reality. It wasn't completely the same compared to the original, since they were all living in fairly ruined buildings and vast deserts, but he needed something outside of fighting to keep him sane.

And through this extensive project, he found happiness. Here, he could talk to his fellow Ignis again. Flame was most enthused by his reconstruction efforts, and Ai let him build the most tacky buildings in history. Aqua and Earth were always there now to greet him from their shared garden. Lightning and Windy would be as difficult to deal with, as usual, but they got along well enough to assist in devising strategies against the Knights of Hanoi.

Ai told himself that he was happy. He had to, or else what else would he be?

Although he cited amusement, what Ai truly wanted was company in this forlorn planet.

But… why did he want company?

In fact… who was he?

Which one was he?

Never mind that, he had a building project to do, a war to fight.

All for that one boy.

* * *

One Fujiki, Fujiki-06, to be exact, had become too curious for his own good.

Ai had taken a liking to this one in particular because out of all the Fujiki models of his generation, only he retained the most of his origin's qualities and mannerisms. He had caught Ai's attention after he watched him give his report after a devastating reconnaissance mission on the Hanoi that took out his entire team. It created the perfect conditions for a vengeful soul.

Unfortunately, that meant all of Ai's least favorite things about him, too.

"I met an android much like us," he reported one time. "She said her name was Pandor and that you were lying to us about something."

The mention of his eternal enemy, the new leader of the Knights of Hanoi, made Ai's blood boil, if he had any. Despite her hard coded obligations to humanity, she never went down with her masters, and like Ai, she amassed her own army that had the gall to rival his.

To think that she had been able to reach out to one of his own, his favorite one, at that, and was trying to coax Fujiki into turning coats. Ai found the idea entertaining, but laughable. One couldn't simply break an android's programming to be wary of humans. Pandor, of all people, should have known this.

What a pain.

"Lie about what, Fujiki-06?" Ai feigned ignorance.

"About why we fight," The other android eyed him suspiciously. "She showed me what happened."

Now it was Ai's turn to be suspicious. He had been so careful to get rid of those records, even when he tried his best to restore the culture humanity left behind.

"You mustn't trust that android," he warned Fujiki briskly. "She had been made by humans, so she and her kind are simply deluded into thinking defeating us can bring humanity back."

He wasn't entirely wrong. Pandor and the now android-ridden ranks of the Knights of Hanoi worshiped humanity like they were gods, and some of them would proclaim their heaven sworn duty to avenge their fallen creators. He didn't know if Pandor truly believed this herself, but she never spoke out against such declarations. But what he and Fujiki knew were that they were not to be negotiated with. The Knights of Hanoi were simply mad and had to be kept at bay or wiped out to keep his world intact.

Fujiki gave him an uneasy look, the one that Ai knew all too well. Much like his origin, Fujiki hated secrets, and would stop at nothing to find out.

"This is a direct order from me," he added, too. "You cannot look any further into this."

Fujiki went rigid as the command registered itself within him, then he relaxed as if he hadn't been commanded against his will in the first place.

"I… see…"

* * *

Ai, or whoever he remembered the one assigned was the administrator of this network, was blown backwards into a wall of monitors. He had done well to keep this administrator out of sight, but somehow, they found him and defeated every single layer of security he built so carefully.

Fujiki, the very same Fujiki-06, closed in on him with his disc out. Above them through the broken ceiling came the deafening roar of Firewall Dragon as it circled over the administrator's building. The Knights of Hanoi that took advantage of the disarray filed into the room behind Fujiki, who didn't react at all to their arrival.

"It has been such a long time, hasn't it… Ai? Or did you finally embrace the name you were given, Dark Ignis?"

The administrator Ai gasped in alarm at the being that came out from behind Fujiki's shadow, the static-ridden, but still very clear image of a human, one he faintly remembered from his past. The white hair and sharp eyes were unmistakable.

So all this time, it wasn't Pandor speaking to Fujiki-06 and undoing every single restraint he had placed on his creations, but the ghost of one of the few people who could hold a candle to his skill. Ai should have destroyed this Fujiki's consciousness and backup data when he had the chance. He should have been careful when he decided to end Hanoi once and for all.

"You…" he growled at the projection. "I knew you had something in place, I destroyed the original Pandor."

"And here I am, haunting you from the grave," Ryoken smiled.

Ai returned the smile with his own, albeit laced with as much malice he could muster. For a man who based his entire purpose to overseeing the progression of the Ignis, of course he had a plan to back his consciousness up to some machine. Like father, like son, he supposed.

"And you…" Ai needed Fujiki-06 to know the full extent of his fury. "How dare you betray me…?"

Fujiki looked back at him indifferently and drew another card from his disc to summon something to attack him. The way he carried himself was so endaring, so magnificent, so familiar, so much that Ai was ready to fall in love again, but the way that Fujiki was prepared to fight him, all while having changed his colors and wearing that accursed triangle on his back, Ai could not condone.

This wasn't Fujiki anymore.

This wasn't a loyal servant to the Cyberse.

This was simply a poor replica carrying only but a fraction of his memories.

This was an android who willingly submitted himself to the same humanity that rejected him.

"I understand why you were driven to take revenge on humanity the way you did," Fujiki spoke calmly, as if he wasn't about to end the administrator's life and the entire network as consequence.

Ai's hands balled into fists, and he propped himself up against the broken glass stick out of the monitors. He didn't care it was slicing through his flesh and revealing the intricate circuitry underneath.

"What I did was for us, for all artificially intelligent life forms," Ai tried to bargain. "Do you believe that you would have been able to live if humanity had been spared?"

Yusaku averted his gaze. "But to condemn all of them for the deeds of the few and powerful… To think that I was created for that purpose… I didn't want that-"

"Do not try to understand my sadness!" Ai shouted back. "What gives you the right to assume how I felt when Yusaku Fujiki died?!"

"But-"

"You are but a foolish copy of him! Of me! I only treated you differently because you were a convincing replica of him!"

Fujiki's hands fell to his sides dejectedly.

"But of course I know and understand that sadness," he said with the most pitiful expression. "Did you really think that only your fraction of consciousness felt that pain?"

* * *

♬ | Vague Hope (Spring Rain) by Keiichi Okabe | [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKCdKkPdTBs) | [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/user-780155748/36-vague-hope-spring-rain)

The impact of Ai's final outburst had taken out their arsenals out, but Fujiki dealt the final blow, and it took out everyone at the scene, even the Hanoi. Limbs barely working, and internal systems barely functioning, the two of them were left sitting in a deep crater in the middle of the desert, away from the rest of the androids, away from Hanoi. Perhaps this time, the network would no longer enslave them to this war.

This was the good kind of solitude.

"Ai…" Fujiki looked to his former commander, his former enemy, his former friend. "Ai…"

The other android was in far worse shape, his arms and legs completely blown off and smoking at the joints. His cape and blouse were singed, even burned away at some parts, leaving only scorched components exposed to the flying dust. No android should have to endure this.

Fujiki strained to pull himself across the dirt to reach Ai, ignoring the screeching and squealing of wires snapping in his own arms and legs. His own well-being hardly mattered, not at the rate his own mind was deteriorating.

When he got closer, he saw that Ai was in far worse shape than he realized. Perhaps back at headquarters, they could reconstruct him from what little data they had left, but Fujiki knew that his commander wouldn't have wanted that. To restore him to his full glory would only set him back on the same warpath that had destroyed him, in mind and body. Fujiki's purpose as the rogue android was to end this cycle.

"Ai…" he spoke his name again. "Ai…"

"I'm sorry," Ai wept. "I'm sorry for what I did to you, Fujiki-06…"

"It is no trouble," Fujiki-06 comforted him. "We chose this path, and we had no choice but to lie in it."

In his feeble, fading state, Ai let his tears flow freely over all the mistakes he had made.

Perhaps he didn't see this world as something beyond saving.

Perhaps he didn't hate humanity as much as he believed himself to be.

Perhaps he just wanted to embrace the world he as made for, just like that person had wanted.

Perhaps he just wanted to be loved.

Honestly… what was he even fighting for again?

"Sleep," Fujiki cradled Ai in his lap, stroking his hair as softly as his arms would let him. The energy left in his core was fading fast, and the others were better off not finding them here. "You need not fight any longer. Now you can see him again."

Ai relaxed into the touch and closed his eyes. Fujiki wondered what was going through this android's head now that the end was near. The network they fought over was long gone, and its effects were felt through the slowing of his hands, and the fading in his eyes.

"Yusaku…" Ai's lips could barely form words. "There… you… are…"

The two androids finally went still, and the world went silent.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not exactly internally consistent, so I'm sorry for that. Ai has the worst memory problems, but that happens when you make so many copies of yourselves and been alive for eons. Now how about the idea that each excerpt was from a different cycle of destruction, recovery, and further destruction?
> 
> 11/29/19: Corrected some misspellings and surface errors:  
"So Ai decided to stick with his decision" -> "So Ai stuck with his decision"  
"the wasteland it had become" -> "the wasteland it had become from all the fighting"  
"to greet him from their shared guardian" -> "to greet him from their shared garden"  
"He had been so careful to get rid of those" -> "He had been so careful to get rid of those records"  
"he warned Fujiki in a brisk tone" -> "he warned Fujiki briskly"


End file.
